Subject: Re: I'm outta here... From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 23:42:53 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3215288570336038@naggum.net> * Louis Theran | (1) If you weren't looking for sinister conspiracies and trying to | justify bizarre claims about Foderaro's supposed desire to harm the Lisp | community, you'd assume that he just wants the code to be written in a | consistent style. His preferred style happens to involve if* and not | involve extended loop. At issue is whether that "consistent style" is compatible with the standard or at direct odds with it. The issue is not if* and extended loop. Extended loop can be emulated with simple loop, which sometimes is a good idea, but is mostly just nuts qua requirement of a "style". At issue is the _prohibition_ against when, unless, if, and cond, the _standard_ conditionals, which makes a world of difference. If people were free to use all these, it would be an issue of misguided personal preferences, nothing more. With the prohibition against use of standard conditionals, it is something quite a bit more sinister in nature. | If I were to submit code that consistently used | | (if test (progn ...) (progn ...)) | | to a project you were maintaining, would you accept it? Have you never heard of coding standards before this incident? | (2) Users may make any modifications permitted by the license under which | Foderaro released the code. That license says nothing vaguely related to | the claims above. Yes, it does. Its amazingly stupid "coding standards" document appeals to the same kind of sense of community that the GNU Coding Standards and any other _serious_ and _competent_ coding standards documents do, but it is in fact nothing but one, lone anti-social rebel without a clue who has written down a few of his personal issues with the standard. | Your only legitimate point is that apparently you won't be able to | cooperate closely with Foderaro, since you are not willing to make | contributions in a style consistent with the rest of his project. Anyone who has learned Common Lisp from any available textbooks will be unable to contribute. Asking people to refrain from using non-standard cruft is one thing, but asking people to refrain from standard operators is quite different. In effect, this anti-social nutcase is saying that "if you know Common Lisp, you are not welcome here". | This is Lisp. Lisp has macros. Learn to deal with it. The community is | much better off when anybody who wants to contribute free Lisp software | feels welcome to do so on terms that they find comfortable. If only they could be mature enough to understand that people are equally free to voice their opinions about what they have done. That is not the case: Disagreement with his disagreement with if, when, unless, cond, and loop is forbidden. He exploits one level of freedom and then closes the door on those who want to exercise theirs. Why is he unable to deal with people who use _their_ preferred macros? Why should everybody dance to his tune and he flatly reject everybody else? This anti-social attitude is at the core of this "discussion", not the _specific_ macro silliness. Specifically, if I wanted when and unless and implemented them with if*, would that be acceptable? If not, the something is _really_ wrong with our anti-social "the world is barely big enough for me" dude. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.